Seeds of commerce in NYCHA deserts: Attract stores, and supermarkets in particular, to public housing developments in desperate need

By Howard Husock

|NEW YORK DAILY NEWS|

Oct 16, 2016 | 5:00 AM

Underserved (Debbie Egan-Chin/New York Daily News)

Nobody knows the Brownsville Houses better than Carrie Scarboro. The head of the public housing development's residents' council, she's lived there for all her nearly 50 years. She can tell you why there's a hole cut in that basketball court fence: so Brownsville kids can get quickly back to their own turf when threatened by gangs from a neighboring project. She can tell you which buildings are plagued by criminals, or how hesitant elderly residents are to "go anywhere outside the development."

And she can tell how hard it can be to find a decent supermarket.

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"You bring the meat home and you find out it's spoiled," she says. Even the closest ones are a long walk down Sutter Ave., so far that some elderly residents, despite their low incomes, must pay for delivery.

The Brownsville Houses — like many other New York City Housing Authority complexes — can justly be described as a "food desert," where decent, affordable, fresh food is scarce or nonexistent.

It's a problem created by NYCHA itself, and one it could easily take steps to fix. By making vacant land available for commercial development, especially supermarkets, NYCHA could both better serve residents and earn desperately needed income to help it meet its huge backlog of repair needs.

In a new report for the Manhattan Institute, I find that Brownsville is one of 180 of NYCHA's 328 developments inadequately served by supermarkets; either there are too few to serve the neighborhood population or the existing markets are not within easy walking distance. Some NYCHA residents face distances of up to half a mile or more to reach a market — and must then come back with their groceries.

They include some of America's largest public-housing developments, including Cypress Hills in Brooklyn and South Jamaica in Queens. A 2008 City Planning report found that more than half of all NYCHA properties fall within community districts the city has deemed underserved by supermarkets. The same report found significant overlap between areas of supermarket need and districts characterized by "diet-related diseases, such as obesity, diabetes and heart disease."

It's a problem for which city planners are to blame. Beginning in 1944, NYCHA policy prohibited commercial development in new public housing projects — based on the misbegotten notion that mid- and high-rise buildings surrounded by open space, not stores, would make for a better quality of life.

Such Robert Moses-era foolishness would bear the brunt of Jane Jacobs' criticism in the early 1960s — but not before dozens of isolated housing complexes were built, in which the poor lacked access to the vitality of neighborhood life New Yorkers savor. It is no surprise that surveys in NYCHA properties across the boroughs regularly find residents asking for more convenient access to grocery and retail.

Thankfully, in a city where finding real estate for development is no easy task, these large open spaces could serve as the sites for new commercial opportunities. John Catsimaditis, who controls the Red Apple supermarket chain, expresses interest in building for NYCHA properties.

"Under the right conditions, we'd be willing to do it," says Catsimatidis. Those conditions include round-the-clock security — an additional boon for residents.

NYCHA itself could reap a revenue windfall. In my report, I find that the Authority could realize roughly $19 million in annual gross rent from serving all residents in the 37 census tracts included in just 50 of its properties. For NYCHA properties, carrying a maintenance repair backlog estimated to be as high as $17 billion, the revenue would be more than welcome.

The benefits extend further. Pedestrian traffic, including from non-NYCHA residents, would make projects more like traditional neighborhoods, likely resulting in improved public safety.

In its 2015 "NextGeneration" plan, NYCHA announced that it would eventually "maximize the revenue and use of ground floor spaces." But that refers only to the limited number of existing storefronts — many dating from before its 1944 policy.

The time is ripe for this hidebound bureaucracy to show much more imagination, and make city food deserts bloom.

Husock is the vice president for research and publications at the Manhattan Institute and author of "Turning Food Deserts into Oases: Why New York's Public Housing Should Encourage Commercial Development."